


if you never bleed, you're never gonna grow

by dreamer89



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst and Humor, Christmas Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hogwarts Inter-House Friendships, Multi, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Post-War, The Burrow (Harry Potter), Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28113780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamer89/pseuds/dreamer89
Summary: Seventh-year Ginny Weasley wants to ride her personal wave of numbness as long as she can, and she's not looking forward to returning to the Burrow for Christmas break. To avoid watching the clock tick down to Christmas Eve in boredom, she brings new friend Astoria Greengrass home as a welcome distraction. It's a bittersweet season, but Ginny doesn't have to face it alone.
Relationships: Arthur Weasley/Molly Weasley, Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	if you never bleed, you're never gonna grow

An apple. Of all the things, Ginny’s dad asked her to get him an apple. Hogwarts always had the best, he claimed. He had always liked them, and of course constantly repeated that saying “an apple a day keeps the Healer away” to lovingly annoy his children. But Ginny hadn’t expected this request amidst the still-smoking rubble of the Battle of Hogwarts.

She couldn’t say no, so she did a well-practised Disillusionment charm just in case of, well, anything, and made her way to the kitchens.

The house-elves were gone, and it was quiet as Ginny began her search, finally finding a bowl of fruit on a singed table. Then she rounded a corner and heard voices. She peeked around and saw Astoria sitting on top of a counter, gently brushing her thumb over Malfoy’s face.

“Leave it alone, Astoria. It doesn’t even hurt.”

“Fucking liar,” she said, sadness and affection shining in her eyes. 

Ginny reversed the charm. “Ugh, I am never going to get used to this,” she intoned, surveying the couple with arms crossed.

“ _ You knew? _ ” Malfoy said, grey eyes wide and a bright red mark on his right cheek.

“I tried to keep it a secret, but she caught on,” Astoria said, jumping off the counter. “If you won’t use magic, go get some ice or something,” she told him, and he swallowed, walking away. “We had a, uh, brief encounter with Lucius,” she said in response to Ginny’s questioning look. “But we don’t need to talk about that right now. How are you? I was worried when I didn’t see you with Neville and Luna.”

Ginny stared at her for a few seconds. “Fred’s dead. Huh, that rhymes,” she said in a slightly hoarse voice. “Fred’s dead and I don’t feel anything.”

“Oh, Ginny,” Astoria said, pulling her into a hug. 

“Why don’t I feel anything?” she asked desperately. “ _ Why? _ ”

“There’s nothing wrong with you. After the accident, I couldn’t cry. It felt like a bad dream, and I was waiting to wake up and my parents would be waiting for me at the breakfast table.”

“It’s morning now...and I’m not going to wake up from this.”

“No, you’re not,” Astoria whispered. She reached out and carefully untangled a few knots in Ginny’s hair.

“I should get back, before my dad wonders what’s been taking so long.” Ginny said, as Malfoy returned with a frozen steak pressed against his cheek and an open bottle of firewhiskey in one hand. Astoria took it from him, replacing it with her smaller hand and closing her fingers around his.

“You look ridiculous,” she said to him. “Don’t see what she sees, but if you get a second chance you better fucking take it.” She wanted to be angry with him, to scream in his face, but she was just numb. Numb and exhausted, like how sometimes in dreams she would try to run but her limbs simply refused to obey. 

Ginny turned to Astoria and conjured a shot glass. “Can I have one for the road?” she asked. She downed the firewhiskey with her best poker face, feeling that it was somehow important to protect her Gryffindor reputation.

“We’ll talk. Write me, Floo-call. Anytime,” Astoria said.

Ginny nodded and walked away, shiny red apple in hand.

When she came back to school, Ginny wore a gleaming new Head Girl badge and wouldn’t even say Fred’s name aloud. Always the little sister, now she was the last one left in school (the grand finale, as her dad used to say with a proud smile). Now all these younger kids looked to her for advice, as if Ginny had any clue what she was doing. She wanted to be Just Ginny, not anyone’s sister or daughter. She rarely wore anything more than tinted moisturiser and chapstick, but she put on her brave face in the mirror every single day.

Her first night back in Gryffindor Tower, she burned the stack of condolence cards and letters she had received over the summer. She couldn’t risk her parents seeing her do that at home, but the castle was all hers now. Harry had bought her Rollerblades when they were doing her school shopping; they were Charmed to handle uphill and downhill inclines. She’d skate all around the school like she owned the place, Arnold the pygmy puff frequently perched on her shoulder because somehow that thing survived the war. The clueless blob of fluff was just as chuffed to cuddle with her as when she got it in fourth year. Ginny was a natural athlete, and she quickly learnt some tricks that she could show off to the younger students. She could make gliding on one foot look especially easy. She loved to rub it in Filch’s face since Hogwarts hadn’t thought to make any rules against skating. McGonagall was not a fan, given the wrinkle in her forehead that showed whenever she saw Ginny on her blades. But Ginny never skated when classes were in session, and Harry’s gift was so expensive that the other students could only dream of getting their own. Perks of dating the Boy Who Lived Twice.

On the first Hogsmeade weekend, she breezed past WWW since she could get whatever she wanted by owl before it was released to the public. Instead, she hauled two heavy Honeydukes shopping bags back to her dorm. She ate an entire box of Ice Mice in one sitting and threw up an hour later in Myrtle’s bathroom. No regrets. Fuck that place and its resident ghost. 

“Hey, this is where my mum killed Bellatrix Lestrange,” she coolly announced at dinner one night, pointing at the spot where she was sitting at the Gryffindor table. The chatter around her halted, leaving a deathly quiet in its place. “I’m just saying,” she said with a shrug, and took a long sip of pumpkin juice. No one talked to her while she finished her meal, and she spent the rest of the evening holed up in her room devising Quidditch plays. 

Ginny was playing Quidditch better than she ever had.  _ Isn’t it impressive how she’s persevering through so much tragedy _ , the sports columnists wrote. Apparently Lee Jordan raved about her performance on his new radio show, but Ginny never listened to that. She had become deeply invested in a wizarding wireless soap opera that coincidentally aired at the same time. She tried to explain the elaborate family trees of all the characters to Hermione, who did nothing but interrupt her with questions about Ginny’s feelings and pleas to talk to someone. 

“No one wants a weepy Weasley, Hermione. It’s not on,” she said, and left before she lost control and told the older girl to go back to the fucking library where she belonged. 

Then on a chilly autumn morning, the day after Narcissa soon-to-be-Black’s divorce filing was announced in the  _ Prophet _ , Theo Nott was sifting through Malfoy’s ensuing congratulatory and/or hate mail. “Luscious Malfoy can go to hell,” he read in a loud but matter-of-fact voice. “This is what happens when we don’t teach spelling at this school.”

Two tables away, Ginny burst into giggles. She could hear Fred’s laughter in her head; he was the one who had come up with the U-No-Poo concept after all. He took so much joy in combating fear with humour. It was Fred who got a tearful Ron to smile again after the infamous teddy bear prank, when neither of their parents had been successful in consoling him.

Astoria walked into the Great Hall while Ginny was still doubled over in mirth, and then of course Ginny had to explain which made her laughter only more impossible to stop. The other Gryffindor girls had worry in their eyes, and Ginny knew there would be whispers about whether she’d finally cracked up after The Worst First Year Ever and The Sixth Year From Hell. But Astoria understood that this was her way of coping. She was there for the hiccuping sobs that eventually followed, when they skived off their morning classes and hid in the kitchens. That night, they set off fireworks from the top of Gryffindor Tower and convinced the Bloody Baron to blame it on Peeves. 

“I want to see as many beautiful things as I can,” Astoria said softly. 

Ginny sat shoulder-to-shoulder with her for a long time but didn’t say anything, because she understood the younger girl too. 

Of course, Astoria came with baggage--baggage who she reminded every time she saw that she would hit with a bat bogey hex if he said anything out of order and was met with sullen silence until eventually he quietly answered with a “hello, Ginny,” as if it were a normal greeting. Then she picked him for a Potions group due to an endorphin high and spite towards Slughorn. They got a fucking Outstanding and shared the smallest of smirks at the professor’s sour face when he handed out the grades. It unnerved her so much that she stole Romilda Vane’s lipstick and scrawled “Malfoy stinks” in large pink letters on a girls’ bathroom mirror and also blamed that on Peeves. 

Ultimately, Ginny decided that she was fine with Malfoy as long as they both maintained an air of cool politeness, and Astoria wisely limited their interactions. On Sundays, they would sit at the Ravenclaw table with Luna for a late breakfast. Malfoy would divide up the Prophet and silently slide Ginny the sports section, Luna the advice columns and horoscopes, and Astoria would already be eagerly grabbing for the puzzles. Luna and Astoria could always be counted on for conversation topics, as weird as they sometimes were, and that saved the other two teenagers from ever having to directly address one another. 

They were used to this routine by the first Sunday in December. Ginny was dousing her waffles in syrup when a first-year Slytherin girl strode over to Malfoy, and tapped him on the shoulder. If it wasn’t for her Quidditch reflexes, she would have been covered in syrup herself.

“HI DRACO, IS IT TRUE THAT YOU’RE A SUPER SPECIAL RARE VEELA AND ALSO A WEREWOLF AND ALSO A SEER AND ALSO SECRETLY IN LOVE WITH HARRY POTTER? BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT LOADS OF PEOPLE ARE SAYING,” the girl practically shouted at him without pausing to take a breath. 

Malfoy blinked a few times, mouth slightly agape. “That’s what people are saying about me?”

“Yeah! I told everyone it wasn’t true, but they didn’t believe me. So I said I would ask  _ you _ then and here I am.” Then the first-year realised who was sitting across the table and squealed. “YOU’RE GINNY WEASLEY! Oh my God! Er, wait, I mean, Merlin’s b--”

“We get it, Courtney,” interjected Astoria.

Now Ginny remembered who this girl was. The Muggle-born who was Sorted into Slytherin. 

“Yes, I am,” Ginny told her. “And I am very much dating Harry Potter, so you can tell your Housemate to stay away, he’s already spoken for.” 

Astoria snorted.

“Courtney, that was a joke,” Malfoy said quickly.

“OKAY BYE DRACO AND ASTORIA AND GINNY AND WHOEVER YOU ARE,” the first-year called out as she ran off. 

“I’ve never seen such a strong natural ability to fend off Nargles,” Luna commented.

“Cunning little snake,” Malfoy stated, sipping his tea.

“What?” Ginny asked.

“Now that everyone sees she can walk up to this one and say whatever she wants without threat of a hex, no one will want to mess with her,” Astoria said with a smirk. Then her expression grew more serious. “I can’t help but worry sometimes. So, that was good. Anyway, what seven-letter goblin philosopher wrote  _ Critique of Pure Gold _ ?”  __

“Hell if I know.” Ginny stretched her neck and noticed Filch trying to hang up some wreaths near the entrance. “Ah fuck,” she said, “Christmas hols are coming up fast.” She let out a little groan.

“You and Luna are going home, right?” asked Astoria, a bit confused. Luna answered yes, and then looked to Ginny.

“Same.” Ginny paused. “But...I’ll be the only one still at home. Everyone else won’t get there until Christmas Eve. I’m kind of dreading the quiet house, to be honest,” the words slipping out of her mouth before she knew it. Ginny chewed at the inside of her lip.

“Well,” Astoria said slowly, “only if you wanted, I mean...I could come with you?”

“You’d do that?”

“Yeah, if it’s alright with your parents of course.” Astoria shifted her eyes across the table to the blond boy currently engrossed in the newspaper, signaling to Ginny who scoffed in response.

“Please. You’re an orphan and we survived the Carrows together. Mum will be trying to stuff you with baked goods the whole time. And once I tell Dad that you’ve been to an Internet cafe, he’ll be sold.”

“Alright then, sure, I could keep you company and then come back to the castle on the twenty-fourth.” 

“And they won’t mind? Your sister and the fer--uh the ferns, Neville’s ferns. At the greenhouse, you know. I heard you made a great impression,” Ginny said, trying very hard to recover. 

Astoria hid her face behind the crossword page, while Luna seemed to accept that the attachment issues of plants were a valid concern. 

“I don’t have a problem with it, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Malfoy drawled without looking up. 

“Well nobody asked you,” Ginny snapped. “I was only concerned about Daphne who is nice and gave me a cool sign name, and Neville’s plants. I love plants. Everyone should have respect for plants.”

Astoria started humming a Christmas carol whilst she worked on her sudoku and the others continued reading in silence.


End file.
